Midway Museum Completes Successful First Mission

Nearly a year since the decommissioned aircraft carrier USS Midway opened as a museum at the Navy Pier, an organizer admitted he and fellow museum officials had been conservative in estimating crowds for the first 12 months.

Generally, mistakes aren’t good on a ship that used to launch and retrieve fighter jets , but this has been a happy mistake.






“Everything’s running about two times what the first-year projections were,” said Scott McGaugh, the marketing director for the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum.

In its first 11 months of operation, the Midway has attracted 800,000 visitors, McGaugh said. Museum officials had projected first-year attendance of 440,000.

While museum officials had planned on taking on 5,000 members, the membership tally is at 11,500.

Though he declined to give dollar amounts, McGaugh said the museum has been profitable since the day it opened. And with more funds than expected, the museum is running ahead of schedule in its plan to open more of the ship to visitors.

The Midway hosts a wide range of people, McGaugh said, not just “military buffs and the History Channel crowd.”

But those people come too.

“The Midway is just a natural draw for Navy guys,” said Ray Casey, a Dallas-area businessman who organizes military reunions for a living and is familiar with the San Diego market.

Louis Sander, who is organizing a reunion of the USS Rankin in September at a Mission Valley hotel, said one of his former shipmates enthusiastically told him he’s not going to miss the Midway during his visit.

Still, two-thirds of the visits to the ship are not military-related, McGaugh said.

Since it opened June 7, the Midway has hosted school groups (some spend the night), has been the scene of military re-enlistments and retirements, and has seen its share of convention and corporate get-togethers. Allstate, the Illinois-based insurance company, recently held an event aboard the ship. Hewlett-Packard Co. plans a return visit.

There has also been interest from Hollywood. McGaugh said producers of “Fear Factor” have indicated an interest in filming on the 1,001-foot-long carrier.






It’s been a memorable year, said McGaugh, seated one recent morning at a table reminiscent of Starbucks on a sponson, or gun platform.

Museum officials prepared as best they could, but there were inevitable surprises. For example, they hadn’t counted on the second-wettest winter on record, and what that might do to the Navy Pier, where the ship is tied up. “You never think about 3 inches of standing water,” McGaugh said.

One of the museum’s current challenges, McGaugh said, is creating safe, civilian-style access in a ship where sailors have long used ladders to go from deck to deck.

The museum has set a mid-June deadline to finish construction on a pair of elevators to take people with disabilities from the pier to the ship.

The Midway is booked for conventions and parties for most of 2005, and museum officials are taking reservations for 2006 and 2007. Yet they are still taking the cautious approach to planning and budgeting. McGaugh said he does not know how long the Midway’s honeymoon lasts, or how to tell when it ends.